Long before three African American women registered the twitter handle, #BlacklivesMatter, and started sending out tweets that helped to mobilize the spontaneous outrage against the impunity that followed the killings of unarmed black people by police officers and by vigilante in the US, there was always a rich history of resistance against criminal justice oppression by people of African descent and their allies. This presentation demonstrates the theory of Martin Luther King Jr. that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. By treating Black Lives as if they do not Matter, the lives of human beings everywhere are threatened and so all should rally in support of Black Lives in the interest of humanity.

Recorded at the University of Auckland, Tuesday 4 June 2019

Biko Agozino is a Nigerian criminologist best known for his books Black Women and the Criminal Justice System (1997) and Counter-Colonial Criminology: A Critique of Imperialist Reason (2003).